What do you think?
Rate this book
Insight Into a Bright Mind: A Neuroscientist's Personal Stories of Unique Thinking
Recent groundbreaking research examining the minds of the most highly intelligent, creative, and intense brains translated by a neuroscientist through interviews, storytelling, and literary science. Insight Into a Bright Mind explores new directions for the neurodiverse experiences of humans. You will learn how your brain is as unique as your fingerprint, and how your experience is elevated because you're simply "hard-wired" differently.
- GenresParenting
472 pages, Paperback
Published March 30, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 15, 2026
10% in and it's such a waste of time that I can do no more. In Dutch we have a saying "kicking in an open door" which is the specialty of this book. It's constantly stating the obvious, full of clichés, full of anecdotes that only address a poor view on the point that is being made.
I tried to skip forward and there was a whole chapter about the word "unique" - yes look at all these examples of people being unique - athletes bodies are unique and minds can be unique as well! And you'd think that it would come to some point about how exactly gifted minds are different from non-gifted minds, but again it's a very long very frustrating path at a middle grade tone going in circles about people being so unique.
Subjects are conflated in a way that makes it flat out wrong at times (I'd only gotten to some learning theory and brain biology), which is weird coming from a neuroscientist. (For the sake of it, the worst one was equating negative reinforcement with constant fight/flight and trauma). Perhaps the attempt to make the subject palliable to the masses overshot and resulted in a blended generic text, with an overkill of "science-y" examples that do little to enlighten the subject.
I'd like to say I'd recommend this book to middle grade kids doing presentations on the subject, but it's 145k words and not very informative.
I tried to skip forward and there was a whole chapter about the word "unique" - yes look at all these examples of people being unique - athletes bodies are unique and minds can be unique as well! And you'd think that it would come to some point about how exactly gifted minds are different from non-gifted minds, but again it's a very long very frustrating path at a middle grade tone going in circles about people being so unique.
Subjects are conflated in a way that makes it flat out wrong at times (I'd only gotten to some learning theory and brain biology), which is weird coming from a neuroscientist. (For the sake of it, the worst one was equating negative reinforcement with constant fight/flight and trauma). Perhaps the attempt to make the subject palliable to the masses overshot and resulted in a blended generic text, with an overkill of "science-y" examples that do little to enlighten the subject.
I'd like to say I'd recommend this book to middle grade kids doing presentations on the subject, but it's 145k words and not very informative.
August 24, 2022
I forget how I came across this book but am so glad that I did. It proved timely as I had recenly discovered that I have the trait of "intensity" along with neurodiversity and giftedness, all of which "explain a lot". A few years earlier and it would have proved very hard indeed to find any material addressing these overlapping topics and how it FEELS to be the person actually living with them.
Tetreault has created a novel offering that is both scientific and practical, plus extremely well resourced (Tetreault has a PhD specialising in neurodevelopment and deorodegenerative disorders and is dedicated to making the most promising research accessible for individuals) yet also personal and compassionate, addressing the felt experience of living with a bright mind from the inside out, as well as from the objective viewpoint. As such, I felt "accompanied" by her and her numerous personal insights throughout the book's easily accessible material, all of which offers a positive, indeed celebratory, spin on what it is to be unique, complex and extremely hard to pigeon-hole. She also addresses the trials and tribulations of growing up, navigating school and beyond, along with the many foibles and repercussions of high sensitivity and "feeling different" in a mainstream world. I discovered much to learn from, also a great reseource for my own writing, not to mention oodles of morale boosting material and I feel sure I will return to its pages again and again.
Tetreault has created a novel offering that is both scientific and practical, plus extremely well resourced (Tetreault has a PhD specialising in neurodevelopment and deorodegenerative disorders and is dedicated to making the most promising research accessible for individuals) yet also personal and compassionate, addressing the felt experience of living with a bright mind from the inside out, as well as from the objective viewpoint. As such, I felt "accompanied" by her and her numerous personal insights throughout the book's easily accessible material, all of which offers a positive, indeed celebratory, spin on what it is to be unique, complex and extremely hard to pigeon-hole. She also addresses the trials and tribulations of growing up, navigating school and beyond, along with the many foibles and repercussions of high sensitivity and "feeling different" in a mainstream world. I discovered much to learn from, also a great reseource for my own writing, not to mention oodles of morale boosting material and I feel sure I will return to its pages again and again.
October 16, 2023
Raised my understanding of living with a bright mind and a neurodivergent brain. It helped me develop a new understanding of the interplay of exceptional giftedness, ADHD, trauma, anxiety and depression in my own life .
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews